


Tales from the Maw

by TheDinosaurNerd



Category: Little Nightmares (Video Game)
Genre: Anthology, Mentions of Six
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-04 12:21:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12168789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDinosaurNerd/pseuds/TheDinosaurNerd
Summary: Hidden in the depths of The Maw, the unseen and forgotten scurry from hiding place to hiding place, seeking to escape the fate that looms above all. This is a collection of stories from those who lurk in the shadows, under the footsteps of monsters.





	1. The Prisoner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of a boy who does not dare to escape, for the impossible man hears all.

                The boy never did anything out of line. It was unwise. So many other kids had tried to get out of the prison. Some had succeeded, but most were just brought back by the Janitor, whom the kids had taken to calling the impossible man. Everyone knew that the kids that broke out all the time were the ones that got on his nerves.

 

                Everyone would go eventually. All the kids knew that. The Janitor would come in and take a handful of kids, never to be seen again. Nobody knew where they went, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out things weren’t good.

 

                Usually, the kids that got on his nerves were the first to disappear. So, the boy stayed in line. Tried to get on the Janitor’s good side, assuming that thing had one. He followed directions, ate when he was supposed to, slept when he was supposed to, and never tried to escape. He did his best to delay the inevitable, to put off his fate as long as possible.

 

                Today was like any other. He sat alone in the cafeteria, eating a pathetic little meal in the darkness. But a sound echoed from beyond the bars. He looked through to see a little girl in a lovely yellow raincoat. She was clutching her stomach, clearly starving. It was a pitiful sight. She stumbled into the light and nearly collapsed. The boy looked over at what little food he had, and sighed. He picked up a loaf of bread and tossed it through the bars. The girl stumbled over and ate it hungrily. When the bread was gone, she looked up at him and nodded in gratitude, then disappeared into the shadows.

 

                The boy sat down and hugged his knees. Good luck, he thought. If not him, then at least someone should have the chance to escape. She would need the luck, anyways, for she was heading straight into the lair of the impossible man.


	2. The Campfire (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of a girl who ends up in the depths of The Maw, finding a place by the fire. (Part 1)

                She remembered her escape vividly. All the kids were asleep except for the girl, who had been planning her escape for months. On her free time, she had explored the extent of the prison, making sure not to go anywhere forbidden. She didn’t need to piss off the impossible man before her escape. Eventually, she found the perfect escape route.

                While the others were asleep, she slipped out of her bed and crawled through the room silently. She entered a room lined with shelves, with a vent entrance located high up on the far wall. She climbed up a stack of cages and ran across the shelves to reach the vent. She crawled through the duct for a while before emerging near the cafeteria. She had hoped the cafeteria would be empty, but luck was not on her side.

                The Janitor stood on the other side of the bars, likely setting a trap for nomes. The girl tried to sneak past him, but the impossible man is not so easily decieved. As she walked, the Janitor sniffed the air, then croaked loudly and pulled himself upwards into the rafters. The girl continued to walk forward, climbing another stack of cages and crawling through a hole in the bars. She dropped down on the other side and had begun to walk on when the Janitor dropped down behind her. The impossible man groaned, his jaw cracking, as she began to run. She reached her destination, a manhole cover in the floor of a shower room, pulling it out as the Janitor moved in. She leaped into the pipe below, barely escaping the grasp of those impossibly long arms.


	3. The Campfire (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of a girl who ends up in the depths of The Maw, finding a place by the fire. (Part 2)

                The girl awoke in a dark room. She heard water dripping from above. She stood and looked up to see the pipe through which she had fallen. It was a long way down. The girl looked around, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, and moved on. She had been walking for a short while, going from room to room, when a loud screech came to her ears. She whirled around to see a leech drop from a pipe on the ceiling. The horrific creature started to slither across the ground towards her. She shrieked and ran, as more leeches emerged from the shadows. She ran around a corner to find a bright fire, burning in the center of the room. The leeches stopped, repelled by the fire. The girl sighed in relief, and was about to sit down by the fire when a voice from across the room startled her.

                “Hey.” The girl nearly screamed again. She looked across the fire to see another girl, older than herself. She wore a cloak that covered her eyes. “Welcome to the campfire,” she said. “What’s your name?” The younger of the two simply shook her head. She had a name once, but she couldn’t remember. “Figures. You can call me Kid.” The girl nodded.

                Kid showed the girl her ‘bedroom’. It was a tiny room, with a small lantern in the corner and a tiny mattress she stole from the prison. “There’s another room around here, if you’d like to stick around.” The girl simply nodded. For the first few days after her escape, she only sat near the fire, barely moving to do anything. Kid would disappear for hours, returning with her pockets stuffed with food. Eventually, the girl would start venturing out into The Maw as well.


	4. The Campfire (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of a girl who ends up in the depth of The Maw, and finds a place by the fire. (End)

                “We should name you.” The girl looked over at Kid. The two were sitting by the fire. “You’re a runaway kid, right? We could call you RK.” The girl smiled.

* * *

                RK and Kid had become almost like sisters. When Kid brought that up, she had to explain to RK what a sister is. Life in The Maw didn’t exactly teach her the best vocabulary. The two stayed within the shadows, taking short trips to different parts of the ship to get food. Kid refused to allow RK anywhere near the kitchen, instead taking her up to the prison cafeteria to steal. They occasionally had run-ins with the Janitor, but he was relatively easy to avoid. Kid had a small knife that she had found in the lower parts of The Maw. They rarely had to use it, but it was useful in certain situations (the Janitor was going to need some bandages).

* * *

                The two kids had plenty of encounters with the nomes. The little creatures were strange, always scurrying from hiding place to hiding place, and running from any sound. However, the little things grew accustomed to the two kids. They would occasionally sit by the fire and bring the kids food. In return, RK gave out frequent hugs.

* * *

                RK had been out on a food trip by herself. Kid had come down with a cold and was staying down in her room. RK had managed to get some bread and cheese from the cafeteria without any encounter with the impossible man. When she returned to the fire, it was far too quiet. This part of The Maw was not exactly loud, but the silence was still unsettling. RK grabbed a torch, and stepped into Kid’s room to offer her some food, and was confronted by a terrible sight.

                Kid lay on the old, dirty mattress, dead. A leech uncurled itself from her body and screeched at RK. She screamed and began to cry, tears running down her face. As the leech slithered towards her, she gripped her torch and began to beat the thing.

* * *

                Long after the leech had stopped twitching, RK was still smashing it, leech guts all over the floor. Tears still rolled down her face, although she had stopped screaming. RK dropped the torch and grabbed Kid’s knife, carving a cross into the wall. She spent the next few hours weeping by the fire.

* * *

                RK had found a suitably sized box, no doubt discarded by the Janitor. She lay Kid in it and nailed it shut, shoving it over a ledge and watching it tumble into the depths of The Maw. The least she deserved was a proper funeral.

* * *

                And so life in The Maw continued for the girl, running around in the shadows to find food. She continued to avoid the kitchen, although she would never know why. There were countless close calls with the impossible man, plus several encounters with leeches. RK did her best to kill every one of the vile creatures she could. Those who knew her in the prison would never know if she escaped The Maw or not.

 

                The nomes, on the other hand, knew that she would.


	5. The Vermin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of a kid who lives in and around the kitchen, stealing food where he can and annoying the chefs as much as possible.

                They had a schedule. Wake up, go to the kitchen, prepare as much food as humanly possible, send it up to the Guest area, then go to sleep. Sometimes, one of them would have to go up there to prepare some extra food for the fat, gluttonous guests (not that the kid knew what lay outside the kitchen). The kid worked around this, as when the chefs were asleep or out of the kitchen, he’d steal as much food as possible, and stuff it away in his little hiding place. He would snicker when the chefs would discover the missing food, trying not to laugh when they would run around the kitchen screaming and looking under the tables. For a long time, they never found him.

                After a while playing off this system, he was caught off guard. Both chefs had to go up to the guest area, leaving the kid free to have fun. It didn’t take very long for him to get carried away. With the kitchen completely empty, he was free to wreak havoc. The kitchen was shortly reduced to a mess, with the kid throwing things off shelves, flooding sinks, and ruining as much food as he could.

                Suddenly, the elevator doors opened, and the kid’s eyes went wide. He slid under the table as one of the chefs walked into the room. He let out a loud scream at the sight of the kitchen in ruin, and began waddling around, looking under the tables. The kid knew he couldn’t stay hidden forever, so while the chef was looking away, he made a break for the door. He heard another scream from behind him as he slipped through and ran towards the next room. Shortly, the kid found himself in the dishwashing room, with a pulley system of hooks running along the ceiling and into the next room.  As he looked around for a hiding place, both chefs burst into the room. They saw the kid and bellowed, as he ran into the next room. He opened the door and kept running, eventually coming to a balcony. With nowhere else to go, and the chefs close behind, he leapt onto one of the hooks, which barely pulled him out of reach. In anger, the chefs threw bottles through the air at him, still screaming.

                The kid looked off into the abyss of The Maw, still hanging from the hook. He had an entire system set up, living in and around the kitchen, and it was shot. He had no idea what lay before him, what horrors awaited him across the void.

* * *

 

After this incident, the chefs decided to start locking the doors around the kitchen, making things much harder for a certain little girl in a lovely yellow raincoat.


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of a girl whom we all know, and the life she led before we found her.

They all knew her. The girl in the raincoat. She was the most mysterious part of their lives. Nobody knew where she came from, or why she was there, or where she got that yellow jacket. They didn’t know where she lived, as she certainly didn’t live in the prison with the rest of them; although one boy said he saw her sleeping in a suitcase. In any case, she was a complete mystery, a stranger to them all; they had only one thing to associate her with: the number Six.

The girl came and went as she pleased. The janitor was clearly no trouble for her. Still, she stayed near the prison. Perhaps she would have too much guilt for leaving the others behind. Perhaps she just wanted to stay in familiar territory. But sometimes she would disappear for days, then return with some small trinket stolen from the higher levels of The Maw. She would sneak it into the prison and show it to all the other kids, smirking at their awed gasps and giggles. She never seemed quite happy, but those times made things a little less depressing.

Other times, someone would peer into a dark corner to see her weeping, hugging her knees and hiding her face.

She never talked to anyone. Some even wondered if she could talk. They wondered what stories she had to tell, if ever she were to speak to another soul. But the girl remained silent, stalking in the darkness, alone.

One day, she disappeared. One girl reported she had snuck through the bedrooms as they were sleeping. They waited a while for her to return, some fanciful item clutched in her tiny hands. She never did return, and it eventually became obvious that she tried to escape, for good.

All the children in the prison gave a silent prayer for that little girl in the lovely yellow raincoat, that she would again see the light of day. It was the least she deserved for those little moments of joy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. Chapter six, so... I kinda had to do a chapter about her.
> 
> Comments are welcome.


End file.
